Clima motivacional en el aula

Macintyre (1995) suggests that affective factors, especially anxiety, are the obstacle in the process of language learning (as cited in Di, 2010, p. 2). Hence the first, quantitative, phase of the study sought to answer the research question of whether the participants perceive English language anxiety. Based on the results presented, it has been found in my study of 60 undergraduate students that anxiety plays a significant role in their educational field. Anxiety has affected their ability and capability to learn and use English smoothly and without any error. So in my study I have found that 38.3% (23 students) rated their ability as good in English and 35% (21 students) said their English skill is satisfactory. Only 3.3% (2 students) have excellent knowledge of English. Thus, maximum participants’ knowledge and skill in English is not in an excellent state.

Second Language anxiety is important as it represent an emotionally and physically uncomfortable experience for some students. Thus, the second research question concerns the effects of anxiety in the participants’ performances. To begin with, in the qualitative question, one of participants commented that, “Obviously my anxiety affects my learning process in various ways. Sometimes I get upset when my friends get good marks than I get.” So in this study, second language anxiety has been found to have potential negative effects on the students’ academic achievement, cognitive processes, the social context and the reaction for the language learner. In my study the majority of the students that is 3.9 on the Likert scale most often start to panic when they speak in English without any preparation (Reaction for the Language Learner) and also worry about failing for their English (Academic achievement). The results indicate that the majority of the students often do not know how to say something in English (Cognitive processes) and a bit often prefer to talk in English in

the classroom (Social context). Therefore, their negative attitude and such traumatic experiences for language anxiety affect their language learning process.

The three types of anxieties (trait, state and situation) often overlap based on the student’s individual characteristics. As several research studies (Aida, 1994; Macintyre & Gardner, 1991; Oxford, 1999) of anxiety have adopted a situation-specific approach, which can be seen as trait anxiety measures limited to a given context. In my study I have also found the similar overlap. Situation-specific anxiety has the characteristics of trait anxiety related to a specific situation, such as public speaking, writing examinations, first encounter with a native English teacher, finding unexpected questions on a test let the students tend to forget things that they know and learned etc. Second language anxiety is situation- specific, because it is mainly related to the specific situation in classroom performances, including listening to the teacher, speaking before the whole class, class quizzes, evaluations by teachers and classmates and apprehension about classroom activities (as cited in Di, 2010, p. 7).

The second language anxiety has affected in all the four skills of language as well. In terms of listening anxiety, Scarcella and Oxford (1992) mentioned that language learners are likely to become anxious when the listening tasks are too difficult or unfamiliar to them (as cited in Tallon, n.d. p. 7). Young (1992) also stated that listening comprehension is highly anxiety-provoking if the discourse is incomprehensible. In my study, the total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.5 which show that the majority of the students very often become anxious during listening test even they are well prepared. This might happen as they are in pressure to understand every discourse or else they will receive low grades. They also sometimes do not get the message their teachers convey while providing lectures. So this type of situation in the class is highly anxiety-provoking for the students.

Moreover, as previous research revealed that speaking in front of other people using a second language seems to contribute the most to language classroom anxiety (MacIntyre, 1999; Horwitz et al., 1986; Young, 1991) (as cited in Liu, 2012, p. 124), similarly in this study, 33.3% (20 students) reported that they often feel embarrassed when other students are hearing their English accent in the class. 31.7% (19 students) said always while 16.7% (10 students) reported sometimes and sometimes not. 11.7% (7 students) said not all and other 6.7% (4 students) reported less often. Therefore, the majority of the students’ anxiety is in pronunciation also. Moreover, the findings show that they very often get nervous and their minds go blank when they want to use correct grammar to speak English in the class. While speaking in the class, the majority quite often feel scared when they translate word by word the expressions from their native language into English language. Hence, they become confused by the number of rules of English, struggle in remembering the target rules and face problem of interlanguage grammar. One participant commented in the qualitative question that “My main source of anxiety is my grammar. I am very confuse about English grammatical rules, that is why I cannot speak in English without any hesitation.” It can be said from the results that the participants have high speaking anxiety. Besides, they believe that learning a second language primarily involved memorizing vocabulary words and grammatical rules. Such enormous beliefs lead to disappointment and frustrations, and thus cause second language anxiety.

Second language reading anxiety has also received empirical attention from L2 researchers. Of the four skills, reading can be regarded as especially important because reading is assumed to be the central means for learning new information (Grabe & Stoller, 2001) (as cited in Wu, n.d., p. 279). In my study, the majority of the students very often get upset when they do not understand what they are reading and feel uncomfortable when

they have to read English aloud. The possible reason might be of their less fluency and pronunciation problem in English. But the majority of the students quite strongly believe that once someone get used to it, reading English is not so difficult.

Hassan (2001) pointed out some possible causes of writing anxiety from a linguistic and cognitive perspective, such as poor skill development, inadequate role models, lack of understanding of the composing process, and authoritative, teacher-centered, product- based model of teaching. He stressed that self-confidence is extremely important in determining students’ affective response to writing task. In this current study, the majority of the students less often choose to write down their thoughts in English. So in this case they have less motivation and autonomy to practice writing out of the class. The total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.3 which show that they often freeze up when they are unexpectedly asked to write in English. Some of the students commented about writing in the qualitative question, that is “Sometimes I face problem in formulating an idea in writing in English,” “I get less mark when I write anything of my own” and “For my spelling mistake I get less mark.” The reason for these results could be for poor skill and low self-esteem of the participants.

Furthermore, with regard to the third research question which concerns the sources and influential factors of language anxiety, the findings of the study show that they experience anxiety to a great extent for the following various causes. Behind their language anxiety, one of the primary sources is communication apprehension where students fear in communicating with people because they have difficulty understanding others and making themselves understood. The findings show that the majority of the students pretty often get frightened when their teacher asks them to speak in English in front of class. This is consistent with the results of Caprio (1987), Williams and Andrade (2009), Burden (2004)

and LIU (2012) where they found negative reactions to being called on in class or speaking “on the spot” and “in front of the class” produced the most anxiety from the students’ perspectives.

Test anxiety is considered to be one of the most important aspects of negative motivation. Like fear of exams, quizzes and other assignments used to evaluate the students’ performance. In this study, the total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.3 which show that the majority of the students feel a bit often confident and relaxed during exam. Another result indicates that the majority of the students most often feels panicky and tends to forget things that they know and learned when they find unexpected questions on a test. So one comment of a student about test is that, “My mind stops working when I get uncommon question in exam.” Another source of anxiety is fear of negative evaluation which is the worry about how others view the speaker. I have found that the majority of the students most often worry that the other students will laugh at them when they speak English. A student said that, “I feel insulted when someone insult me or laugh at me in front of somebody when I speak in English.” It is evident that the existence of anxiety among the participants is significant.

There are other factors which increase their anxiety. Most of the participants in this survey feel extremely anxious when they are asked to take part in a role-play or dialogue in front of the class and when they do not have any idea or opinion about the topic. One participant said that “I feel embarrassed when my teacher does not understand what I am saying. I get nervous and also become non confident. Due to grammatical error I feel shy to speak in front of my class.” They also feel very anxious when the teacher does not understand what they mean in English. Also when they do not understand what the teacher is correcting they feel very anxious at that moment. Some of the students answered to the

qualitative question that “Dificalt understand lectar,” “Teacher talk very fast in English I do not understand,” “I get problem in the lecture. Many time don’t understand what teacher say” and “This is the first time when I hearing English lecture in the classroom. So that I can’t understand.” Besides, making mistake in English class, when they could not respond quickly or smoothly and when being called on by teacher and waiting one’s turn make them moderately anxious as well. On the other hand, the majority of the participants that is 31.6% (19 students) reported to feel slightly anxious in their first encounter with a native English teacher but 25% (15 students) said to feel very anxious. The possible reasons behind these results are the participants’ inability to comprehend lectures, exercises or the instruction which is an anxiety-provoking factor.

There are some characteristics of the learners which are responsible for their anxiety. Many students who are introverts are more likely to be anxious than extraverts (Brown, Robson, & Rosenkjar, 2001) (as cited in Zheng, 2008, p. 3). Introverts usually prefer individual work more than group work, so they may easily become anxious if they are put in more communication oriented classroom settings. Extraverts, on the contrary, may feel uncomfortable if they are asked to work on their town all the time. In my study I have found that the majority of the students that is the total mean score on the Likert scale is 2.8 which shows that they less often like to participate in class discussion. The total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.4 which shows that the majority of the students often like to work on their own. So, most of the participants are reported to be introverts which is one of the main reasons behind their anxiety. Though most of them are introverts but the total mean score on the Likert scale shows that the many students believe that pair work most often led to greater involvement. They also strongly believe that group work often creates a motivating environment to use English which helps to increase the quantity of oral/aural

language practice. Due to some circumstances and their traits they cannot involve themselves in such activities. For language anxiety many students think that they are not as good as compared to others and this happens due to either self-perceived low level of anxiety or competitiveness as found in the study of Zhao (2008). They keep thinking that the other students are better at English than them and this finding is found similar to the finding of Zhao (2008). In my study the total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.8 which show that the majority of the students most often think that others are better. Similarly, they always worry that their writing in English is a lot worse than others. For these reasons they are not being able to get rid from their anxiety.

Classroom procedure was counted another source of anxiety. Here the majority of the participants that is 3.9 on the Likert scale show they very often tremble while giving presentation in front of the class and they most often feel embarrassed to use simple or broken English. Hence such classroom activities arouse anxiety among students and they want to reduce their fear against it. Similarly Young (1991) argued that the reason why learners do not participate in the classroom activities is the fear of committing a verbal error (as cited in Mesri, 2012, p.149). The total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.7 which show that the majority of the students most often want language classes should be student- centered rather than teacher-centered. Furthermore, 63.3% (38 students) believe that a friendly classroom atmosphere can always help students to overcome their anxiety and increase their involvement in activities more. The students prefer CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) method of teaching rather than GTM (Grammar-Translation Method) or ALM (Audio-Lingual Method).

The result obtained in this study supports a previous study of Feryal Cubukcu (2007) and the paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate the effects of anxiety in

the second language classroom. The main sources of anxiety Cubukcu identified is similar to what I found, and these are: (a) Presenting before the class, (b) Making mistakes, (c) Losing face, (d) Inability to express oneself and (e) Fear of failure (p. 133). For perfectionism, as found in the study of Zhao (2008), the participants in this study also worry more about the opinions of others and have a higher level of concern over their errors. Thus these characteristics have the potential for making language learners unpleasant as well as less successful than other students.

To decrease anxieties, the teacher can build confidence by acting more as an advisor, or even a friend and “less like an authority figure making them perform” (Young, 1991, p.432). Instead of viewing herself as the expert whose task it is to transmit knowledge and leaving learners "silenced and powerless" (Auerbach, 2001, p.145), the teacher can adopt the role of facilitator, whose responsibility is to provide students with input and opportunities to communicate in the language in authentic situations with authentic materials (as cited in Burden, 2004, p. 16). The findings show that the majority of the students often find their teachers to make learning interesting and explains concepts clearly, have strong communication skills, supportive and friendly and are satisfied with their teacher’s instructional abilities. On the other hand, the majority of the students quite often want their teachers to allow opportunity for student-student correction in English as they are pretty often afraid when their teacher corrects every mistake they make. Also, they claimed that their teachers less often take feedback from them on every lesson. So according to me, the teachers should avoid overcorrection. The teachers can focus on fluency rather than paying too much attention on accuracy. The majority of the students also prefer peer correction which is an aspect of CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) method. They also believe strongly that teacher and students play part in reducing anxiety.

So teachers should recognize the signs of anxiety in the learners and help them to overcome.

To address the fourth question, the overall findings of the study suggested that learners’ autonomy and motivation play vital role in reducing language anxiety. Teachers need to encourage students to rely more on themselves and less on the teacher. Students should be self-motivated with an inquiring nature. So here in the study the total mean score on the Likert scale is 3.6 which show that the majority of the students often try to response in English as much as possible in the class. They also said that their teacher often provides encouragement and motivation. Moreover, 43.3% (26 students) claimed that they often like to take responsibility on their own during the language learning process. However, 61.7% (37 students) claimed that they always like to prefer their teacher to guide and solve their problems during the language learning process. Therefore, it can be said that the students have motivation and they are autonomous as well but these are not enough in them in order to reduce their anxiety so they still want their teacher to guide and lead them during the language learning process. Thus autonomy, motivation and anxiety are inter-related. Unlike Spratt, Humphreys, and Chan (2002) (as cited in Liu, 2012, p. 127), the presence of autonomy and motivation do not decrease language anxiety. It is evident that these three have a relation but the difference is not very significant.

Finally, with respect to the last research question, the qualitative results of the study demonstrated that the solutions students think are effective to reduce second language anxiety are practice and learn English, practice free-hand writing, friendly and supportive environment where they can speak/practice English without hesitation, take English language learning courses, friendly classroom atmosphere, speak with friends and relatives, participate more in the class, read English newspaper, listen to English news, watch English

movies and role of teachers in helping to reduce anxiety. From the qualitative data, I have seen that most of the students’ writing skill is not up to the mark. They have problem in grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation and sentence construction.

The significant comments of four students regarding practicing English are: S1: “Lots of practice.”

S2: “I think more and more practice on English will reduce language anxiety.”

S3: “I should speak out wheather it is right or wrong. After speaking then I check it out and do not do it again.”

S4: “Practice reading and writing in English.”

Another student commented on friendly and supportive environment and that is, “The environment where every time I can talk in English that maybe effective to reduce language anxiety.” Two other students commented on speaking with friends and relatives; “Group conversation will be the best solution to reduce language anxiety” and “I think practice to your friends in speaking English or listening English speaking CD are cutting or reducing language anxiety.” A noteworthy comment was given by a student about watching English movies that is, “Watch a lot of English movies. Keep watching till you have started to